She didn’t think it was something to worry about. Neither did her Parents, or Skadi, or Valeria. I still worried my ass off though. I managed to convince Val to heal Emma in her sleep. I had to nag her for two days about it, but eventually she relented.
And Emma coughed again. This time Val actually deigned to investigate the problem, instead of throwing her general purpose panacea at the disease.
“Strange, this illness seems to be resistant to magic.”
“How can that be?” I was as confused as I was terrified.
“Some creatures are born with an inherent resistance to magic. Theoretically this could extend to microbes, but I have never heard of those actually being observed.” She stroked her chin. “The only other option would be an engineered plague, strengthened by a [Perk] or some other System bullshit. But that needs some serious expertise/levels and I can’t imagine someone making an engineered disease that gives pregnant women a light cough. That would be wasteful to the extreme. Also, Emma isn’t even the only gal with a bun in the oven, yet everyone else seems fine. This warrants further investigation.”
She pulled out a booklet out of nowhere and started to scribble something in it.
“I’ll take two hours out of our training time to investigate, you are free to do as you please during that time.”
Somehow I couldn’t get excited about the free time. I was afraid for Emma, for our child.
For the next few weeks, I did everything I could think of to help. Which was what Val told me to do. Which was:
- Check on all residents of the village daily and report any illnesses.
- Do not let your panic show, as it might cause mass hysteria
- Be there for the mother of your child, you dolt, she needs some emotional support too
I did as I was told.
About a week after Emma’s cough hat started, other people were getting sick. Still nothing more than a light cough, but it was noticeable. Also all those other cases were just as resistant to magic, as Emma’s was.
Val soon had a hypothesis: “Who exactly went ill?” I reviewed my mental list and counted them off on my fingers. “There’s Old man Jonas, little Timmy, Kathrin, Sawyer, Anne and her newborn”
She paused for a second, then said: “So an old guy, a child, a pregnant woman, a newborn, a new mother and Sawyer just recovered from a rather severe flu episode, right?” I nodded my head. That was an accurate description, as far as I was aware.
“All of the victims were somehow weak or weakened. An opportunistic infection? No. Would have a recognisable spread. Some trigger causing symptoms? Wouldn’t explain Emma. Maybe genetic? No. Too diverse in targets. Maybe some kind of … Oh! … Oh! That is brilliant! I need to check something.” She disappeared. As far as I could tell she really did disappear, she didn’t just go invisible.
Val reappeared after a minute.
“Your baby is the cause!” I was bewildered by that statement. “Not of the disease.” she said placatingly “of the anomaly that is Emma. She got sick first, because your baby isn’t quite human, because you aren’t either. A hybrid, no matter what kind, is always very taxing on the mother, doubly so if one parent isn’t of any one species, leaves the mother with less support from the system. That’s why she got sick first. She was the most vulnerable.”
“Wait, the System helps with pregnancy, but not shapeshifter-pregnancy? How come?”
“Ahh, I forgot how sexist your village was. Of course they wouldn’t teach this to a boy. Here’s the basics. The system supports pregnancies of all kinds. It isn’t known why this is, but it has been observed that, especially among enlightened races, women get help from the System to counter complications during pregnancy. Dwarves, Orcs, Giants and Trolls get very little help, as they are naturally very robust, while most elves, fairies and some Kin get massive support, due to them being rather weak on average. The result is that all women have a roughly equally hard time being pregnant. Hybrids complicate things. The mother gets help from the system according to the baby, so a dwarf female pregnant with a human male’s child will get a bit more support, because the baby is half human. As a true shifter, you don’t have a species as far as the system is concerned, so Emma is getting half-human + half-nothing support.”
A lot to take in, though one thing confused me. “Enlightened?”
“Oh. Yeah. Shorthand for the ‘civilised’ races.” She used actual air quotes. “Elves, Dwarfs, Beastkin, Naga. All the species that can reliably hold a conversation when grown up.”
You never stop learning I guess. “OK, so what is actually making people sick?”
Her face dropped a bit. “I don’t quite know. It is something that is everywhere, in the water, in the air, on the soil. Something everybody is exposed to. Everyone in the village is sick, the weakened are just the first ones to show signs of it.”
I was getting irritated, by the lack of useful stuff to do, Val presented me with. “So how do we stop it?”
“I need to investigate more, but you can prepare for a fight. Whatever this is, no way it wasn’t intentional.”
Fighting. Now that was something I could do.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
I prepared myself with renewed vigour. I will admit that I had been slacking a bit, since everything seemed nice and safe. I mean I worked myself to exhaustion, but not to collapse. Now, though? Now I had one goal and one goal only. Save. My. Family.
I spent hours each day, going through every scenario that I could even hope to impact. Mostly it was just ways to carve out a protected space in a warzone, for Emma to hide in. I was pretty sure what I was doing was pointless, but it got me out of my head. I filled my days like this. Skadi and George helped with the scenarios I was training against. Skadi indulged my paranoia, while George simply said it was a good way to train.
Until, finally, Val returned.
“Good news and Bad news. Bad news: I still don’t know what is causing this illness. It seems to be completely undetectable. No tiny organisms, not even some residue in the Mana. Good news: It is affecting a large Area of the forest.”
I furrowed my Eyebrows. “So how is that good news?”
She smiled in her teacher-way. “The area is circular. Which means … Which meeeeaaaannnnsss?”
It finally dawned on me. “Which means it has a centre. One we could locate. Find out what is causing this. Ideally smash whatever it is to bits.” I clapped my hands in joy “Ha! And you called me an Idiot for worrying! Fuck, I feel so much better with something productive to do.”
I looked into her eyes, she looked somewhat pleased herself. Guess that’s just because she figured out the mystery. I would be smug too. “Can we go now?”
She let out a chuckle. “Hm. Maybe you want to tell the mother of your child and your in-laws that you’ll be leaving.”
I smacked my forehead. “Right, people that care for me, forgot about those. I’ll go to them, can you grab Skadi? I wanna go within the hour.” She nodded and I bolted.
It took almost 40 minutes to convince Emma to let me go. She still didn’t believe in my fears, but she acknowledged my need to check. Having to describe the source of my information as ‘a friend, who knows this stuff’ didn’t help my credibility, but Val was very firm on her public non-existence. Had I known more about the world back then, I would have guessed she had gambling debts.
I was trying to leave the hut, but George stopped me. “Do you really think this ‘disease’ is a danger?” I nodded. “I do. I can’t tell you how, but I do.”
He took a deep breath. “Then go and protect my daughter.” He looked straight into my eye.
“I will, promise.” I returned his stare with sincerity.
“Thank you, son!” He gave me a short bear-hug and then he let me go.
I would not dare go against George. I would fulfil this mission.
20 minutes later:
Skadi, Val and I were about two kilometres distant from the village. I was actually the limiting factor in terms of movement. Val could float as fast as she liked and Skadi was a good bit faster in her own Werewolf form. Hers was a bit more animalistic and lent itself more to quadrupedal movement.
After going past the crest of a hill, Valeria stopped us. “This should be far enough. I’ll bend the rules a bit, but transportation has technically always been allowed.” She made no further attempt at explaining herself, as she began casting. Moments later a light blue circle was forming in front of her. It was glowing and pulsating. All over the rim was covered in scribbles. Runes, probably. Val was soon finished and said: “Permanent-ish Portal. Direct trip to the centre of the area and back.” Then she stepped through the disk and vanished.
Oh well, it’s not like I can stop trusting her now. I walked in after her.
We emerged in front of a cave, on the side of a mountain. Said mountain appeared to be ridiculously tall, so since I hadn’t seen it before I guessed that the radius of this disease was ridiculous. The entrance of the cave was covered in claw marks. Deep, deep claw marks. Something massively strong had clawed its way out of here. Or in.
Actually on further inspection, I was willing to bet on ‘out’.
“Anything I should know, before going in?” Val looked me dead in the eyes. “Leave someone alive. We need to talk.” She was taking this deadly seriously. Good.
The cave was some sort of cultist base, like that dungeon half a year ago. Not that I cared. I breathed the air in deeply. People were alive in there. Not overly strong, but no weaklings either.
The whole thing lay in ruins. Those claw marks were everywhere, along with litres of blood on every surface. No corpses however. A monster then. Something they tried to contain maybe? Doesn’t matter.
We went deeper and deeper into the cave. The deeper we went the more blood we saw. As well as signs of fighting. Scorch marks, shattered arrows and crossbow bolts. Also some markings Val recognized as magical attacks gone awry. Lastly there were strange contraptions everywhere. You would know them as ‘Guns’. We sped up our search, until we arrived at the bottom. Another ritual chamber. Once more covered in blood, however there were corpses here. More importantly one of them was still alive, if barely.
Valeria had healed him back up, so we could interrogate him.
“What were you doing here?”
He responded with a mad cackle: “Hihihi! You are too late! Our master has risen. He will devour all. He will be the end.”
Valeria went completely white at this. The phrase was vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place it.
Val took a hold of the man’s temples and said: “Screw the rules, we’ll have to do this the hard way.” Then she looked straight up, her eyes glowing. Actually, so were his eyes. This was weird beyond measure.
After a few minutes the spell ended. The guy was on fire. Literally, his eye sockets were burning. Val didn’t seem to care.
“So what is that Master? What has risen? What will be the end?” I asked Val with frustration clear in my Voice.
She swallowed hard and said: “You.”
Valeria’s POV:
Val had sworn to herself never to do this again, but she needed to be certain. Needed to know her plan had worked. So she did it.
To say it would be uncomfortable would be like saying the sun was warm.
She connected herself to the babbling fool and did it.
She saw his memories. Silas was his name, apparently.
Silas’ POV:
They had done it. Decades of planning. Years of gathering resources. Months of non-stop work. All had finally paid off. And no one knew why. Actually no one knew why it hadn’t worked throughout the last months either but that didn’t matter. Their scrying had finally picked up the signal. It was only for a second but after they had it they could search for it. So they did. In a matter of hours they had their target. A weapon. Forged by the old ones, ripe for the taking.
Silas was thinking about the intricate spell he had constructed, as they began to cast it. It was his life’s work, his magnum opus. A spell so intricate he had to cast it alongside ten other master wizards. All of them above level 50. This much intricately woven mana, shot across the dimensions, with only a scrying spell to guide it. The spell alone was almost incomprehensible in scale and power. Not only would it find the target and transport it across the realities into this ritual circle, it would also permanently enslave the beast to their wills.
And none of that forcing-someone-to-act-shit. That was just asking to be killed by a carelessly worded command. No, the beast would love them like a loyal pet. Unbreakably chained to the Cult.
The ritual would take hours to complete and Silas’ Mind could perform his part on autopilot, so he let his mind wander. He had thought about this project long and hard. There was no way it could fail. They made sure about that. They had thought about every eventuality. He almost chuckled, but he kept it internal so as to not disturb the others’ casting. There technically was one way to fail.
He had talked about statistics a lot with his bosses. The cult of the old ones had its fingers deep into the coffers of many important people and institutions, but even for them the expense of this endeavour was ridiculous.
Silas had one very clear rule when it came to redundancies. If there was a 0.1% Chance of failure then he would not participate. You do not grow old, if you take risks. His bosses agreed with him. That was why he was allowed to truly make a masterpiece of a spell. The only way it could go wrong was calculated at 0.000483% making it essentially impossible. A grandmaster wizard would need to stand next to the target and be ready to counter the spell. Even then it would simply fizzle, allowing them another try. To sabotage the spell, by say removing the compulsion, but leaving the transportation, would take hours of work by the greatest mage on the continent. The spell however would only take 30 seconds to resolve. It was impossible to fail. Success was guaranteed.
Soon the rivers of the continent would run red with the blood of all who defied them. The age of the old ones had come. Their gods had given them a beast, unlimited in potential, yet controllable. With it they would become as gods and kings. It was inevitable. It could not fail.